Make -400/400 unabductable?

As seen in Homestory cup XX, which featured the unreleased balance patch mod on Nov14, mothership is still -400/400 in pvz because it is so costly in terms of building time and resources but it can be killed by any antiair as long as there is energy for abduct. I think abduct is a cool spell but it really kills the matchup if it can abduct anything from such incredible range (just like the previous version of investers). I am no GM or pro. I just want to pick the brains of the pros here. What if we make -400/400 unabductable, just like the frenzied ultralisks? Lets not talk about feasibility first. What will the late game dance look like?

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Professionals 5 years ago understood how to position their late game army in relation to the mothership in order to keep it safe from abducts. If vipers are OP vs the mothership, games where the protoss misplays aren’t evidence of it.

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Ultralisks are unabductable? Wow. Just wow.

Ultralisks and, I believe, brood lords both have frenzy, which renders them immune to almost all forms of crowd control.

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I do partially agree with you. Did you check out the newest homestory cup? It is kinda proven by many late games that no matter how you position your mothership, the abduct is inevitable. Because they can chain it and recall cannot save it. I agree positioning is part of the game but there really isnt any effective method against abduct except for tempest given abduct’s range and tempest kinda sucks against everything else.

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From what I saw, the problem was that the protoss had a hard time keeping the mothership in the proper position because the zerg was constantly running around. That’s largely a map issue where expansions are diagonally opposed which means as you take bases the distance to run back and forth between them increases:

https://i.imgur.com/DBLMDUb.png

This favors the zerg in ZvP and terran in TvZ because it becomes increasingly hard to actually hold onto bases. Terran doesn’t care about defending bases because they can abandon them and retake them.

It is very difficult to move high templar + mothership deathballs to mirror zerg’s movements and, as the zerg runs around, things are bound to be out of position at some point. That being said, the cloaking field has a radius of 5. High templar have a feedback range of of 9. This means if the mothership is on the opposite side of the HTs as the vipers, the HTs have a zoning range of 14. Abduct only has a range of 9. This favors the protoss in theory, assuming he can actually do the positioning correctly.

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It indeed kills the machup, it’s an undodgeable 9 range ability that you can recharge super fast if Feedbackd.

Every time I see the Protoss flying city get pulled by a bug I close the stream.

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Appreciate the explanation. in theory, i understand what you mean and basically agree. From what i see, howevet, it is truly super hard to execute. Hopefully, someone can prove the theory you explained correct.

Theres another issue with the cloaking field tho. I mean cant you just bring multiple overseers to counteract the cloaking field extra range. I understand it is about dancing your units back and forth but bringing overseers requires no skills xD

Broodlords don’t have frenzy

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I believe only Ultralisk have frenzy. No other unit have that.

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Protoss air strong, Protoss air A-moving under Mothership, Protoss air lost his invisibility, huuups, Protoss player stupid, Protoss player whine a lot on forum

Protoss doesn’t even need to micro that much, just stutter stepping, and moving hurt stalkers to the back is about all they need to do.

Forget about the Mothership, it is only a gimmick, like the Adepts.

Focus on Protoss units that should actually work in engagements, and on basic counters.

For examples: Disruptor is too hit or miss, and as such, is not an effective counter to Bio. Colossus dies too fast. Carrier is too expensive for what it does, and could use an upgrade that at least increased Interceptor build speed, so it bcomes a viable source of lategame DPS at the cost of minerals.

So, you can’t neural the mothership anymore? You force Zerg into making vipers, and the only difference between neural and viper pull, in regards to the mothership, is vipers don’t force you to need detection…

I have no idea what you can do from a balance stand point. Neural and viper pulls equally make/made the mothership an incredibly bad investment. They both instantly kill it…

On the other hand, if you can’t pull the mothership and you can’t neural it… then it becomes imbalanced in Toss’ favor. I have no idea what the middle ground would be that makes sense.

Balancing the Mothershis is easy!

Remove it and add Arbiter back.

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Lol, isnt that exactly what they are doing? Bringing back shield battery. Introduce Microbial shroud = dark swarm. They are going back to whats tried and true…

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Any massive unit should not be abductable, hands down.

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how is zerg supposed to counter it otherwise? you build a mothership and its a giant i win button? you already got it buffed to be non neuralable, zerg does NEED at least one answer to it that is reasonably cost efficient.

so it can’t be neuraled, and it can’t be abducted. how else is zerg supposed to take it down somewhat cost effectively?

exactly the issue, thank you for recognizing this.

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